Let’s Tell It Like It Is…

Recently I have had some time to sit back and reflect on life (with my laptop being busted and all it kind of aided this process).  I even had a chance to catch up on my vastly backdated blog reading that needed to be done.  I stumbled onto The Blessed Barrenness‘ post and it got me thinking.

If you had to take a look at my Instagram feed, you would probably think that all that makes up my day is eating Steers on a pretty chair in front of the fireplace, while looking after my 3 young, crazy-with-too-much-energy children…  And I guess you’d be right.  Sort of.  I try and be very transparent about how difficult parenting can be, but posting pictures of vomit on the bathmat or skid marked Barbie panties just doesn’t really make good viewing.  I only really get to properly express some of the difficulties I’m having as a parent on this platform, where I can elaborate on why it’s so difficult…  You know…  Giving myself a chance to back it up before everyone criticises me too harshly or comes to take my kids away.

And in all honesty, who really wants to see the piled up laundry basket, or the fruit that I thought was OK to take to school, but very clearly is NOT OK to consume, my morning “I’m so late” rush to school, or my unmade up face (it’s bad you guys, so very bad), or the tear streaked, snot faces of my kids crying because they don’t want to get into that seat in the car, or my kids sitting on the naughty chair because they still aren’t listening to me for the 100th time that day.  While these things can definitely be slightly endearing to other Mom’s going through the same problem, it’s quite depressing to focus on the bad things all the time.  They aren’t really the things that I want to remember about these early years of parenting, if anything I want to make sure I capture all the fun parts, the messy parts, the growing parts and the learning parts.

And besides that, I doubt very much that my kids will appreciate having pictures of themselves crying or looking terrible when their future bosses Google them on the internet machine in 2030.  Like yesterday for example, where Kyla insisted that she was most definitely NOT the first and oldest of our children, she was in fact the youngest.  She make her point by crying all the way to school and then insisting on sitting in the pram like Knox does when we’ve run out of energy to chance him around the house any more…

BUT…

I do think that there is a tendency in social media right now, to make things seem better than they are.  For example you can’t post that super cute picture of your kid because then it would show the hole in the floor in the background (a very real problem that we had in the old house).  And that is just bordering on social suicide because like who has a hole in their floor with 3 kids in the house?!  How drastically unsafe and like, ugly and stuff.

There is this need to have the best house, best kids, best toys, best clothes, best fun, best life.  It’s so easy to get sucked into this and then fuel that jealously by looking through friends photos of their holiday to Disney Land.

Basically I don’t want to be the Mom that makes another Mom out there feel like they are not doing it right – because you are, we’re just all doing it differently.  I don’t ever want to come across as the Mom who has it all together, who always looks perfect, that always plays with her children educationally and whenever they want to.  That never gets irritated, upset, angry or just sad that I can’t do what I want to do when I want to do it because I now have 3 little people to think of first.  I am not that Mom.  I am a real person who is selfish and makes mistakes, I am a Mom that often has to say sorry to my littles for freaking out and very often says no to painting in the afternoon (because seriously that’s what they go to school for).

So I’m going to give #nofilterday a go.  For all those people out there who think I’ve got it all together and often ask me “how I do it?”, the mask shall now be removed and you will see what really goes down in the Alfino household – even if it’s just for one day…  Because you’ll be begging me to stop…  After all, some mystery on parenting is necessary to continue the human population.